Soldier's Heart Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point [Paperback]

Includes a New Afterword by the Author

ANew York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice
AUSA TodayBest Book of 2007
AChristian Science MonitorBest Book of 2007

What does it mean to teach literature to a soldier? How does it prepare a young man or woman for combat? At West Point, Elizabeth Samet reads classic and modern works of literature with America's future military elite, and in this stirring memoir she chronicles the ways in which war has transformed her relationship to the books she and her students read together. While fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Samet's former students share their thoughts on the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, and the films of Bogart and Cagney. And their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom.Soldier's Heartis an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life.

Discussion Questions

1. Discuss the book's title. What are the different meanings of Soldier's Heart ? In what ways does literature address the ailments of what Wilfred Owen calls, in his poem Insensibility (epigraph), a heart small drawn ?

2. Although much has been written about West Point and military life in America, an English professor's point of view on the subject is rare. What specific insights on this world does Samet offer as a civilian and a humanities professor at a military academy? How is her portrait of military life different from others you have read?

3. How does Samet's description of her students and former students compare to your stereotypes of soldiers? What are those stereotypes? How doesSoldier's Heartconfirm or challenge them?

4. Chapter 1, Not Your Father's Army, touches on the myths and traditions that define West Point, and military life more generally, by alluding tl�